Teaching

Back in about 2016, “giant” games were all the rage in classrooms. Giant Jenga, Giant Kerplunk, Giant Checkers, and so on. Traditional games were coming to life in larger sizes, and I got on the bandwagon with a twist on…

Over the course of my first decade or so in education, I admittedly had little knowledge on what was happening with the little friends down the hall from me in the Kindergarten, 1st, and 2nd grade classrooms when it came…

If you don’t laugh, you’ll cry. Let’s have a few laughs then educator friends. I had some time today and was inspired to write about common teacher-y things that we encounter. Relax, it’s not about anyone in particular. Except if…

In 2017 I wrote a blog called “Rethinking Morning Work,” and it advocated for teachers to rethink how we started our mornings with students. I proposed shifting from traditional morning work (worksheets, problem of the day, etc.) to “Morning Choice,”…

I was recently in a fruitful Twitter thread conversation where the use of acronyms were being discussed, and there was a comment from an individual who said that acronyms are “devices to get students through tests, not to prepare them…

I recently posted a video with one of my 5th grade Ambassadors doing a Greeter training (click link to see the video). This prompted a lot of questions about Ambassadors, Greeters, and how I set this all up. For all…

Math has always been my strength. I understand concepts and catch onto new ones quickly. It could be baffling, then, that my favorite game when I am in Las Vegas is roulette. For those unfamiliar, roulette involves a wheel with…

The days of being an elementary school student, walking into class in the morning, completing a worksheet silently, and pulling out a book to read when you’re done are over. Wait. No they’re not. This age old practice continues in…